Welcome to the first post in the year that marks the centenary of the crossword. We have, as usual, been spoiled for jumbos and themes over the festive break – here are some of my favourite crosswording moments since we last met; your choice clues have doubtless ended up as my emergency wrapping paper so please celebrate any omissions below.

The news in clues

Deft inclusion of topical material is a treat in crosswords; an entire puzzle about the events of 2012 is a thing to treasure. And one was provided by Mick Hodgkin, who we met here last summer, as an astonishing Telegraph Toughie in which every clue had a news flavour either in its surface meaning, or in its answer – or in the case of …

16d Grant-aided bodycut back (6,3)

… HACKED OFF, both, with the definition alluding to the austerity which may some day reduce the deficit and the wordplay to the Hugh Grant-supported campaign. If you haven't solved this puzzle yet, do so quickly before the events of 2013 make you forget those of 2012. Paul also squeezed a few of the names of last year into Thursday's Guardian, most pleasingly a concise summary …

… about the outcome of any Scottish REFERENDA. Autumn 2014 will see only one question asked, but what is the plural of "referendum"? Guardian house style goes for REFERENDUMS and is not alone.

Some of those who prefer REFERENDUMS do so in the interest of clarity; others point out that "referendum" is not one of those Latin -UM words such as "stadium" which becomes an -A; it never, they insist, existed in Latin as that kind of noun, which means that it's fussy and inaccurate to pluralise it as you would have done when in Rome.

Although we use referendum as a noun in English, in Latin it was an adjective. The adjectival form of a verb is not a gerund, but a gerundive, which unlike the gerund has a plural form. The commonest Latin gerundive to have passed into regular use English is 'agenda'. This is only used in the plural form, and as you can see, it ends in -a. So, if you want to be a super superior pedant, you can argue that the plural of referendum is referenda, and if anyone tries to contradict you, blind them with your knowledge of the distinction between a gerund and a gerundive.

Lovely. I'll stick for the mo with REFERENDUMS in the interests of both simplicity and compliance with this paper's style, and our cluing challenge this week relates to another questionable plural. The style guide contains no advice on how to refer to two or more Italian toasties; Collins is the reference for Guardian writers in such cases, and that dictionary gives:

panini (pæ'niːni)noun(plural) -ni, -nisa type of Italian bread, usually served grilled with a variety of fillings

So Collins and in effect the Guardian accepts the Italian plural as an English singular. Since "a panino" risks sounding overly fastidious and "a panini" risks irritating Romantics, it remains a tricky word – not just because of the potential for confusion with football stickers and/or rude slang. The most pressing question, though, is: reader, how would you clue PANINIS?

Latter patter

Unless you know better, a first siting from Phi in Friday's Independent …

18d Net wire, tangled, black – it's one view of the net (8)

… of INTERWEB, suggesting the jocose variant is en route to acceptability.

Cluing competition

Thanks for your clues for DEOSCULATION. There were some inventively misleading definitions, including pecking, necking and tongue-twisting, and even those that straightforwardly used "kissing" often had a charming surface reading, such as HipsterPriest's "Naughty location used for kissing" and the near-simultaneous Robifrom15squared's "Abandoned location used for old plonker".

The runner-up is GeoScanner's helpful acrostic "Primarily dynamic expression of social connection (usually lips arranged touchingly), is obsolete now" and the winner is the smooth medical misdirection of MickinEly's "Inoculated, so prepared to do mouth-to-mouth work".